The guy who stopped WannaCry is reportedly being detained in the U.S.

The infosec community is scratching its head this morning following the news that Marcus Hutchins, the 23-year-old security researcher who singlehandedly stopped the spread of the global ransomware WannaCry, is reportedly being detained in an unknown location by U.S. authorities.

Motherboard first picked up the story, reporting that a person by the same name, also aged 23, was being held at Nevada's Henderson Detention Center. A friend of Hutchins told the publication that he was moved to another unknown location sometime on Aug. 3.

We reached out to the FBI's Las Vegas office, but have received no response as of publishing. Notably, Hutchins is a British national.

He gained international notoriety in May of this year when he registered a domain found in the WannaCry code. In doing so, he inadvertently activated a kill switch which stopped the ransomware in its tracks — likely saving lives in the process.

Hutchins is typically very active on Twitter, and his last tweets before going dark suggest he was at the airport.

"I drink on airplanes because the only thing better than jet lag is jet lag and a hangover" —some really special person

According to fellow security researcher Andrew Mabbitt, Hutchins is reportedly being held in the Las Vegas FBI field office.

UPDATE: Aug. 3, 2017, 11:45 a.m. PDT

CNN reports that, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Hutchins has been arrested for "his role in creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan."

Kronos was first spotted back in 2014, with The Guardian noting that the malware spread via email and targeted online banking passwords. Another unnamed codefendant has also reportedly been indicted.

According to the indictment, in addition to allegedly creating the malware, Hutchins has been accused of "Advertising the availability of the Kronos malware on internet forums; selling the Kronos malware; [and] Receiving and distributing the proceeds obtained from selling the Kronos malware [...]."

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